Category: Album Reviews

“Horses” is not the best record Patti Smith has ever made. It’s one of rock and roll’s best opening acts, but it’s dwarfed her career with it’s gigantism. That album cover, those opening lines. Great moments, sure, but not everything.

“Radio Ethiopia”, her 1976 follow-up, is almost never mentioned. Where its predecessor bridges the logical gap from artist-as-poet plus rock and roll star, the follow up ditches the first half of that equation and shoots straight for affectation. The result – something way more raucous and virile.

It’s pretty clear from the get-go. The woman that opened her first record with the line “Jesus died for somebody’s sins, but not mine” opens the second with the exuberant “Ask the Angels”. Chunky chords, a firm low end and wild guitars are a ways away from the slow-burn intensity of tracks like “Gloria”. But that’s not the only difference.

“Pissing In a River” is frighteningly E-Street, predating future collaborator Bruce Springsteen’s “Darkness on the Edge of Town” sound two years ahead of time. The hallmarks are there – dramatic piano, penetrating organ and downright cinematic soloing. Smith’s performance, her voice cresting with each wave, only adds to the intensity.

There’s a lot to like here: “Poppies” is a narcotic ballad with some of Smith’s most curious lyrics: “Everything is soakin’ and spread with butter.” The title track is a full ten minute auditory assault where Smith attacks primal drums and a scribbly guitars with imitable swagger. She glides across the mess with conviction, leaving no doubt, it’s a noise rock track, but with the added lyrical curiosities (sample: “When I See Brancusi/His Eyes Searching Out The Infinite Abstract Spaces”), it ends up being a satisfying experiment.

Side two unveils the album’s best moment – the riotous “Pumping (My Heart)”. It’s a masterful three minutes of seventies New York City punk. The keys are carnal, guitars oscillate furiously and Smith is in full howl mode. As the song hurls towards its climax, Smith keeps shouting “Total abandon!” It’s a perfect phrase to encapsulate the entire record. It’s an artist acting on instinct instead of playing to popular sensibilities. It’s wild, ugly and not an easy listen. Perhaps that’s why it’s been forgotten over time. Most people prefer to spare themselves the difficulty.

Few rock and roll bands these days elicit a global response to their every move. Sure, the world has progenitors like Lady Gaga, but there’s not a collective that captures our imagination these days. Except for one. Radiohead.

Through the years, they’ve gone from alt-rock afterthoughts to oh-no-maybe-not’s and evolved into unparalleled innovators of their craft. Whether it’s the man-machine tumble of OK Computer, or the heartbreaking disconnect of Kid A, Radiohead has made records that stand not only as critical achievements, but as unmatched classics.

Since then? They’ve stopped. It can be argued that they haven’t made anything nearly as impressive in over a decade. Amnesiac, released in the summer of 2001 is more or less a sister record to its predecessor, with songs recorded in the same sessions. It’s spotty at best. 2003’s Hail to the Thief was a return to guitar rock, but meandered and has left a small imprint. Four years later, there was “In Rainbows,” released with a week’s notice through a “pay what you want” system that shocked a fractured music industry. While the songwriting is strong, it suffered from flat production and lazy sequencing.

Radiohead’s albums are drenched in ambiguity and have always been geared by subtlety. They are not a group that cares much about hooks or riffs these days, as they did with 1995’s The Bends. Instead, they live in the abstract: grooves and textures. Friday’s release of The King of Limbs drives that home. Unfortunately, it’s colorless.

The album’s opener, “Bloom,” begins with a distant piano loop that melts into a series of blips and drum hits. Thom Yorke’s recognizable croon follows, but the song doesn’t seem to DO much. There’s a desire to hear this it build and crescendo, but the song refuses, staying firmly in the middle. And this is the problem with so much of the album’s material. It plays too much to the center and not enough to the extremes that Radiohead has excelled at. “Morning Mr. Magpie and “Feral” suffer from this same fate. “Little by Little” apes their OK Computer-era sound, but it sounds awkward, nestled in a collection of dour material.

Of course, there’s things to like with each of their releases. “Lotus Flower” is a slinky lead single powered by a gorgeous Yorke falsetto. “Codex,” a haunting piano ballad, is treated with care. The vocals are to the front, atmospheric loops sprinkled throughout, with a tasteful horn and string accompaniment to usher it forward. It concludes as a great addition to their catalog.

Still, Radiohead sounds bored. While it’s fair to assume that a band of their caliber has reached the point in its career where they’ve done everything they could have imagined musically, they must now face the challenge of keeping it interesting. Both for themselves and their listeners. This may very well be Radiohead reaching middle age. It may be painful, but they’ve got the drive to continue. It’s just now time for them to step outside of the realm of possibility and capture listeners imaginations once more.

You may recognize Neko Case’s voice from the Canadian indie-pop band The New Pornographers, but this isn’t run-of-the-mill indie-pop. Middle Cyclone is filled with intellectual, complex and engaging alternative pop music. Each listen allows you to peel back another layer.

With a tinge of alt-country and a heaping spoonful of Memphis soul (think Jenny Lewis with the Watson Twins’ Rabbit Fur Coat or Cat Power’s The Greatest), this is a crowd-pleaser from beginning to end. Her voice is strong, flexible and mature. Case could never be a pop star, but she has the pipes of a true professional.

Middle Cyclone is jangly enough to be pleasant without being too sweet. The highlight of the album is the multi-layered instrumentation. Case incorporates everything from acoustic instruments (guitar, banjo, cello) to synths and a toy music box. The variety allows her to create a truly diverse yet coherent collection of songs. The range of different sounds allow for each song to have its own vibe. Ubiquitous vocal harmonies on the album make it warm and inviting. Thoughtful lyrics take this album from just good musically to great overall.

The album takes the listener on an auditory ride. It takes some unexpected turns. The mood sometimes changes quickly, from lighthearted (“I’m an Animal”) to weighty (“Prison Girls”) and satirical (“People Got A Lotta Nerve”) to melancholy (“Polar Nettles”). Each track could find itself nestled into very different mix CDs.

Most of the songs are short and always leave the listener in want of more. The best tracks are the opener, “This Tornado Loves You,” a driving non-traditional love song; “Magpie to the Morning,” a cautionary, sultry summer song and “I’m an Animal” with its prominent percussion and simplicity. The album closes with a thirty-minute field recording of crickets, peepers and other natural sounds. Such sounds are often associated with the coming of spring and summer. Although it seems frivolous to use so much time on the track, perhaps Neko Case is conveying the message that this long winter has come to an end. Fittingly, Middle Cyclone is the perfect soundtrack for the end of our winter hibernation.

Ever since the first Themselves record came barreling onto my radar like a Soviet torpedo back in â€™99, I have been in awe of Doseone and Jelâ€™s creative look at what hip hop music is, and what it can be.

With the new record by the group Subtle, titled ExitingARM, they’ve finally put me on the floor. Subtle has always tiptoed the melodic, free association edge of hip hop and experimental music as a whole since their debut in 2002 with the Seasons EP’s (later to be put together as Earthsick).This time, they’ve made somethingfinally accessible to the rest of the musical world. The Subtle Six have created their â€œpopâ€ record (much like cLOUDDEADâ€™s â€œpop albumâ€ ten) – and let me say, that it works VERY well.

The record begins with the title track, with melodies created by Doseone and Dax Pierson. They instantly grab you and bring you on their continued journey. For those uninitiated, the Subtle records are a story of the travels of a character named Hour Hero Yes. Hour Hero is an everyman of sorts, both an aspiring poet and emcee. This album, according to the always eccentric Doseone, is the final chapter of Hour Hero’s journey. Here, he’s battling the Ungodz and Dr. Moonorgun. The group is just like their name, subtle, so to truly understand the venture of Hour Hero, this record and its predecessors must be revisited again and again to get an idea of the larger story.

The next blatantly noticeable puzzle piece of ExitingARM is Jelâ€™s bone-crushing MPC reaching out of your speakers and slamming your head down (on beat, of course) into whatever happens to be the nearest surface. The rest of the Six join in to create a magical world of beautifully crafted melody. The pace slows a bit on Day Dangerous to let the experience really sink in and the record starts to show just how melodic and perfectly accessible Subtle has become.

After building the pace back a bit on ‘The No’, Jelâ€™s trademark “hand of slam” returns on ‘Sick Soft Perfection’ and along for the ride is a synth line that not even Devo themselves could have dreamed of. The record continues to traverse through an incredible melodic path throughout the middle tracks. The meat and potatoes of this experience are highlighted with slightly more subdued subwoofer-rattling grooves from Jel, Alexander Kortâ€™s entrancing cello as well as doseone and Daxâ€™s melodic, cryptic harmonies.

The album ends with a pair of mellower tracks, ‘Wanted Found’ and ‘Providence’. On both of these tracks Subtleâ€™s past returns. They have a great feeling of some of the highest points of their more abrasive (but equally amazing) debut, A New White. Both tracks give me the chills like my first listens of ‘Red, White and Blonde’, ‘F.K.O. (Fuck Kelly Osbourne)’ and ‘She’. The structures of these two new tracks have a dark, cold feel that will give even the baddest, burliest dude you know the shivers.

In addition to the album, Doseone has created a companion web site to this album to aide in the listenerâ€™s journey with Hour Hero. The site at first glance looks like the clusterfuck of a bedroom that M.C. Escher and Ivan Albrightâ€™s mythical love child must have. As you venture through this site, you find that the â€œfinger of opportunityâ€ begins to show up and by clicking on a character or place of interest, doseoneâ€™s nasal voice will begin reading a poem aiding oneâ€™s understanding of Yesâ€™s venture against the Ungodz and Dr.Moonorgun. I believe this is by far one of the strongest companions to a record in a long time. Especially with the heavy metaphor and strange associations of Doseone’s lyrics, the site can truly help a listener appreciate this compelling tale just as much as the music can.

Atmosphere – â€œWhen Life Gives You Lemons, You Paint that Shit Goldâ€

Minneapolisâ€™s Atmosphere has been a mainstay of underground hip hop since Overcast! showed up in â€™97 – and later, with their major God Loves Ugly in 2002. Since the success of that major label release, Atmosphere has been on a roller coaster of cutting-edge lyricism and production, but also some major disappointments. The last 2 records, Seven’s Travels and You Can’t Imagine All the Fun We’re Having, just didn’t succeed in the same honest, self-aware form that the previous records thrived on. For Slug and Ant, 2008 is different. After their stunning free â€œfull lengthâ€ (and I use that loosely) Strictly Leakage the Minnesota duo have released their biggest step forward since the glory days of Slug howling, â€œFuck you, Lucy!â€

The duo’s new album, When Life Gives you Lemons… is a grimy piano and funk bathed ride through the bowels of drug abuse and womanizing (as well as some empathizing). Slug’s introspective lyrics work well backed with Ant’s new found love of old school funk and piano jams. Atmosphere seem to have regained their stride.
Where Strictly Leakage was a pavement cracking â€œfuck you, I rhyme betterâ€ look at the hip hop culture, â€œWhen Life Gives You Lemons…â€ brings Slugâ€™s insecurities and apparent fascination into the drug culture to the forefront.

With a very mellow start, â€œLike the Rest of Usâ€ and â€œPuppetsâ€ set the tone for the record. Beginning with Antâ€™s heavy piano backing, Slug beautifully weaves his way through the drug life making great use of every day occurrences playing into the human experience. The use of â€œshe showed me outside as she gave me a cigaretteâ€ regarding a conversation with an expectant mother which makes me remember the gold olâ€™ days of Slug reminiscing about the woman with the tattooed hands back on Lucy Ford.

The record then takes a sharp, but welcome turn to the slightly more aggressive â€œShoulda Knowâ€ marking the recordâ€™s halfway mark. Here Sluggo continues his exploration of drugs and Ant brings the heavily distorted bass line crunching along. The upward swing continues smoothly through the second half of the or the record peaking at â€œCanâ€™t Breakâ€ with El-P-like space beats. Slug goes back to the tried-and-true stories of growing up while living in a perpetual fucked up state. He lays down his best crack at an over-serious drawn out line of â€œI fear/and I want/ but I canâ€™t break awayâ€ but keeps the record moving at a solid pace. The record finally culminates with a pair of â€œupdatedâ€ Lucy Ford-esque tracks. Both are solid tracks but nothing to write home about although our narrator’s storytelling still cannot falter even spending more time on his tried and true exploration of a kid growing into hip hop on â€œIn Her Music Boxâ€.

Now with all of the pros, unfortunately the record does have its shortcomings. Although I have always enjoyed Slugâ€™s story-oriented emceeing, the subject matter has been visited before and probably will be visited again. It seems that some of his fascinations (drugs, women, and growing up) have yet to be fully explored. The continuation of his exploration of these matters seems to have lost some of itâ€™s freshness, but still works in this thawed from the freezer adventure. On a more positive note, Antâ€™s production has never been better. I have been skeptical of Ant since the sub-par effort on Felt 2: A Tribute to Lisa Bonet, but his talents truly shine on this effort. The man whips his balls out for all to see on tracks like â€œGuaranteesâ€ and â€œYour Glass Houseâ€ showing off his talents using a Buck 65 guitar strum and a bass heavy synth pad. Seeing the step from the box of his patented bass and the movement style is welcome and very successful.

Atmosphere has crafted a great addition to their legendary catalogue and even with a few stumbling points in Slugâ€™s rhymes, the boys from the land of ice and snow have made one hell of a jump on 2008 and have resurrected Rhymesayers back into the upper echelon of the underground. 8.1/10

Despite the growing yet trivial hipster backlash when it comes to the music scene, there are bands that are definitely worth seeing live and records that are worth buying at the record store. (I know, you haven’t been to one of those in a long time). But at the very least, there are bands that simply shouldn’t be dismissed just as quickly as their discovered just because music trends are so sudden nowadays. It seems as if albums and artists that are new and fresh to the underground scene especially to those of whom who religiously check music blogs, lose popularity among these indie music fanatics just as soon as more and more people start to listen to them. It’s a shame, though. Good bands are good bands, in my opinion.

I happened to get a hold of the newly released CD by the band Why? called Alopecia and instantly fell in love with the album in its entirety. The band is what’s considered a new age take on hip-pop and the trio happens to be from the Midwest. The lead singer practically raps on a lot of the tracks but also sings when the song lends itself to that. What’s most interesting about the band, in my personal opinion, seems to be the lyrical talent of the front-runner and maybe all of that repetitive percussion. To say the lyrics were obscure would plainly be an understatement. But honestly, his lyrics are authentic and raw and reason enough not to let “hipster backlash” get the best of this band.

Anyway, just as soon as Why? sparked my newest music obsession, I quickly learned that they were due to play The Abbey Pub in a week or so. My roommate, who had fallen in love with the CD just as I did, was eager to see them live as well. We ended up going and standing in the front row on the most left side of the stage at the Abbey Pub. Needless to say, they put on a fabulous show. They were energized, personable, and really stayed true to the sound of the songs on their CDs, especially their newest album Alopecia. I mean, not in the way that bands do when they bring nothing new to the table when you see them live either. Like when you could listen to their CD in your living room and it wouldn’t sound any different pounding through your sub woofer as it would if you were crammed into a loud venue with them strumming a few feet away. Those are the worst. But I was happily surprised, because seeing Why? live was practically the opposite. They were brought to life. The drums were loud and powerful because the drummer bounced and grimaced with every deafening slam of the cymbal. The lead singer sung honestly and the tone of his distinctive voice was totally spot on. I was definitely impressed by their performance.

I would simply suggest to all those indie music fanatics to see Why? live if given the opportunity. Although, in a larger sense it’s truly important to realize that regardless of whether or not Why? fails to appear on the music blog Hype Machine over the course of the next couple of weeks, it doesn’t make the band any less of a natural talent. So, I’ll be listening to them for months and months to come because guess what? Fast-moving music trends arenâ€™t for real lovers of music.

About

This site has been a lot of things over time. A hub for my friends to write whatever they want, a web magazine, the home of The Eternal Mixtape Project, and for the better part of the last half-decade, a place for me to put whatever I’m thinking…occasionally.
It’s the longest-lasting creative endeavor I’ve ever had and I’m proud of the body of work that's here, both of my own and those who have contributed.
Enjoy.